Fedora User Management (revisited)

[Enrico Scholz]

Mike McGrath <mmcgrath at redhat.com> writes:

>> Please, stop the FUD about problems without naming them!
>>
> Please see the archives of this thread, not just my comments but
> others as well.

I found exactly one problem report in this thread. This one is caused by
buggy documentation.


> Ignoring the shortcomings of fedora-usermgmt won't make it go away.
>
> 1) Doesn't work in any other distro other than fedora

fedora-usermgmt operates at the packaging-level (required only by
%scripts, not at runtime). Since spec files are distribution specific,
why should I spend much effort into thoughts about other distributions?

And btw, why do you think that fedora-usermgmt does not work in any
other distribution? At least Mandriva and RHEL5 seem to provide the
required environment.


> 2) Only solves a small problem for a few packages since not all
>    packages use it

chicken-egg problem


> 3) Its proprietary.

... like ... anaconda?


> 4) Very few people use it

chicken-egg problem


> 5) Its been controversial ever since its inception (otherwise it'd be
> mandatory by now)

vim vs. emacs are controversial too... I do not see a problem there


> 6) Most sysadmins solve this problem on their own using well defined,
> tested tools

most things can be solved in multiple ways... I do not see a problem
there


> 7) Its author doesn't seem to want to send it upstream to shadow-utils
> for reasons unknown

There was no constructive criticism which showed technical problems or
ways how to enhance/generalize fedora-usermgmt.

One goal of fedora-usermgmt (support for creating users in LDAP instead
of /etc/shadow) does not seem solvable by shadow-utils patches either.


> 8) It hasn't gained any other foothold besides fedora

... like ... anaconda?


> 9) Its use isn't easy.  Just in the last two days this thread and the
> EPEL thread have found people using it incorrectly or having it create
> UID's in an unpredictable fashion, and these are smart people.

yes; there is a bug in the documentation. This can/will be solved. In
the meantime, use

           http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackageUserCreation


>>> Have you contacted the packager?
>>
>> about what?
>>
> About making this transparent to us.  I actually suggested a way for
> all parties involved to be happy but for some reason you're ignoring
> it.

I just do not have enough time to write patches (without a good reason)
which are replacing a working and eixsting solution. I am wasting enough
time in this and previous threads.

But ok... I will take a look at shadow-utils and see what there can be
done...



Enrico